Ferrari wants to get better at making battery cells because they are important for their move to making electric cars, but they don’t plan to make the batteries themselves, said CEO Benedetto Vigna on Monday.
The Italian luxury sports car company has been selling hybrid cars (they use both electricity and fuel) since 2019. They have said that their first car that is fully electric will come out at the end of next year. Ferrari sold just under 14,000 cars last year. They might not make enough cars to make their own batteries and still make money.
“We want to learn about how batteries work,” Vigna said at the opening of a research center on batteries. This center is a partnership with Bologna University in Italy and the chipmaker NXP Semiconductors.
“We will always get batteries from other companies. We want to learn more about them through this research center,” Vigna said during a talk.
“We can’t just accept batteries without understanding how they work,” he said.
The E-Cells Lab is mostly focused on how batteries work and is meant to help Ferrari get better at making batteries. Right now, Ferrari buys batteries from other companies.
“We will use more batteries in the future, so we need to know how they work,” Vigna said.
The E-Cells Lab will first look at batteries that use lithium, which is a type of metal that is liquid inside. But they are also ready to study new types of batteries and new ways of making them. However, Vigna said that he doesn’t think solid-state batteries are a good idea at the moment.